London

Sheep trick: Penelope Walsh puts a new spin on woolly jumpers

The spinner
Penelope Walsh, 50, is currently looking for a home for her spinning tops and weaving loom, while her former base at the Vauxhall City Farm is renovated.Wool comes courtesy of the Wensleydale sheep, and more recently llamas, that graze on the farm; dyes come from the plants in the farm’s dye garden. Walsh sells to individual designers and runs workshops on spinning.

‘Spinning you can do anywhere. You can watch TV or talk to people, it’s very sociable. In the past, spinning was always an activity where people got together and talked.

Feature continues

In London around 150 years ago there would have been spinning houses where young girls spun all day to produce enough thread for weaving. They were based in the East End, where the silk weavers were based – you can’t weave direct from silk-moth thread.

‘I spin the traditional way: wool is taken from the sheep with a comb called a carder, and it’s all beautiful and fluffy. Then it’s washed, which gives it a lovely spring. After that it’s spun on to a single thread with the spinning top, then you ply the threads together with a bobbin, and dye it.‘There is a possibility that there were dye gardens here hundreds of years ago which might have been part of Vauxhall Gardens. Dye recipes have been passed down through the ages; for example, the indigo plant gives a natural blue, madder gives a lovely red, and logwood produces violet. Then you mix them with mordants such as tin or iron to brighten or darken the colour. In the old days they used a lot of urine, but today we use ammonia as using urine is a bit impractical.

‘I studied tapestry weaving at the Royal College of Art but really got into spinning and dyeing when I went on a British Council scholarship to Norway. It takes about four weeks to learn. Some people get it quickly, others are all fingers and thumbs. I do workshops for schoolchildren and you do get some funny comments. The best one was: “Do you have to boil the sheep, miss?” ’